(PBS Newshour) Paul Solman: Northeastern University economist Andrew Sum is featured in our youth joblessness story on the NewsHour Friday. His full picture of the crisis is essential reading, however, and so we share more of my interview with him here. For example, if you are a poor African-American high school teenage dropout, your likelihood of having a job is — 5 percent.
Paul Solman: You have used the term “age twist” to describe today’s job market? What do you mean?
Andrew Sum: What has happened is not a flat trend where every age group is moving up and down together as jobs grow and shrink. The younger you are, the more likely it is that you’ve been thrown out of the labor market. So for 16, 17, 18-year-olds, their employment rates have dropped to about half what they were a decade ago. Meanwhile, people 57 and over are more likely to be working today than they were in 2000. But the younger you are, the more likely it is you’ve been thrown out of the market.